Owning a barn in the winter is full of challenges. From plowing snow to keeping water buckets from freezing, you’ll have plenty of work ahead of you. But one chore – blanketing – is particularly time-consuming. These five tips can help to simplify your blanketing to save you time and frustration.

Minimize Your Blanketing

Perhaps the best way to simplify your blanketing program is to minimize the amount that you need to blanket your horses. If a horse has the winter off from riding, or is retired, let them grow their coats […]

Advancements in technology are revolutionizing the world. Lucky for us, they’re also improving our capabilities in the horse world. Whether you’re worried about your horse having an emergency while you aren’t there, or want to improve the effectiveness of your training program, chances are that there’s a new type of technology that can help you with that.

These three apps, programs, and devices can help you monitor your horse’s health for improved safety and even improved care for the horses in your barn.

It can be difficult to keep your horse in work through the winter with the unpredictable weather and the shorter daylight hours. But if your arena footing starts freezing, then it can prevent you from being able to work your horse at all, no matter how determined you are. These tips can help you to prevent your arena footing from freezing so you can continue to work and even get a jump on next year’s show season.

Start with a Quality Arena

If you’re building a facility, then you really need to invest in a quality […]

Horsemen often rely on hot walkers and treadmills as opposed to hand-walking as an efficient method of conditioning, rehabilitation therapy, and for cooling horses down after work. These devices come in many shapes and sizes, each with its own unique characteristics and benefits. Walkers allow several horses to be exercised or cooled off simultaneously, providing time saving systems and quicker results.

Traditional Hot Walker (or Lead Walker):
This style of hot walker has been used by trainers and farm managers for years. An example of this would be the units made by Priefert (www.prieferthorsewalkers.com). It […]

Horse bedding: there’s never enough of it, is there? Whether you use shavings or straw, horse bedding always seems to disappear at an alarming rate. It’s frustrating throwing down expensive bedding so your horses can literally destroy it, but there are ways to stretch your bedding and save some money along the way. Using fewer resources, better, to save money? Sign us up, please! Here are some strategies to save horse bedding.

Try a sifter: For the horse who treats his stall like the set of “Twister,” there’s no manure pile too large to be […]

At its most basic, the noseband’s purpose is to keep a horse’s mouth shut around the bit. A horse can evade the bit by gaping open his mouth, so nose pressure assists in keeping his mouth closed and adding a measure of control. However, one glance inside any tack room can tell you there are many different nosebands on the market. Use of these different nosebands can apply to certain training or behavioral applications, so let’s take a look at some common nosebands and their use.

Get organized! Your barn and tack room are tough to keep ahead of. With boarders, students, and clients in and out all the time, to say nothing of barn staff never putting things back in quite the same place twice, we know even the best-designed tack room is going to slip into chaos without constant intervention. Prevention is the best way to tackle a lack of organization! With this in mind, we have six easy hacks to a more organized tack room, feed room, and barn

Frozen water buckets: they can affect your life almost anywhere in the United States. Even in the warmest winter refuges of Florida, a freeze can sweep over your farm and harden your horse’s water buckets or trough to a solid mass overnight, leaving your horse without water, and you with the unpleasant task of breaking all that ice. In extreme climates, when the air temperature drops well below zero for extended periods of time, it can be hard to get by without purpose made bucket warmers. For those times when it isn’t an arctic blast, however, you might […]

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Disclaimer

All posts and information provided by Equine Facility Design’s blog is based on personal experience and research and is for informational and educational use only. It is not intended as veterinary or medical advice or instructions. No action should be taken solely on the contents of this website. Please consult a veterinarian, physician, or other qualified professional on all matters regarding health and safety.

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Equine Facility Design is a professional design firm specializing in planning, design, and project management for sites and structures used by the horse community including private equestrian stables, horse barns, horse farms, horse training facilities and more.

Through our work in equestrian planning and design, we work with a wide variety of manufacturers, suppliers, contractors, other professionals. We are also involved with associations and organizations that support the horse community.